By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, October 13th, 2013:
http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/16451/good_news_074_oct13.mp3
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Broadcast Notes:
Broadcast Notes:
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‘Thanksgiving’
Welcome to Good News In The Morning, a program of
words and music bringing a Christian message of hope and encouragement to those
who are looking for intelligent meaningful and spirited approach to faith and
to life.
This program is sponsored by Good News
Christian Ministries Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host
today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian Church in Rockland. As always we
will start by thanking you our listeners were grateful for your encouragement
and support and remember that you can always visit us on our website for
materials to encourage and support you in your Christian walk. I encourage you to mark your calendars for
November first, for an evening of worship and celebration in Ottawa with Good News In The Morning and Ernie and
Linda Cox. For further information about the time and location you can visit
our website, www.GoodNewsChristianMinistries.ca
, or call 613-283-4546.
Today I would like to speak
to you about the celebration of Thanksgiving. It may be fairly obvious on the
day of broadcast, but if you listen to this program on the website, or are
reading the text afterwards, it may not be fully apparent that this is a
Thanksgiving Day broadcast (in Canada).
Well, now it is!
Our Scripture does to speak
about Thanksgiving. It is a brief Scripture
from the Old Testament, from the book of Exodus, chapter 23, when God sets out
for the people of Israel the feasts that they ought to celebrate every year.
And so he says in Exodus 23 chapter 23
verse 14 to 17:
“Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
Celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, for seven days eat bread without yeast
as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib for in
that month you came out of Egypt. No one
is to appear before me empty-handed. Celebrate the feast of harvest with the
first fruits of the crops you sow in your field, and celebrate the feast of
ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in your crops from the
field. Three times a year all the people are to appear before the Sovereign
Lord.”
Feast of Harvest – that's
what we’re celebrating, in Canada, in mid-October. In the United States it is
celebrated late in November, but feasts of harvest are celebrated around the
world and they’ve been celebrated from a very early time. Even the people of
Israel celebrated a form of Thanksgiving. We’ll get into all of that in a few
moments but first let's listen to this hymn of praise Come, Ye Thankful People
Come, a familiar Thanksgiving song. This is from the collection A Celebration of
Hymns.
The celebration Thanksgiving
in North America is surrounded by stories about the settlement of this
continent by Europeans a few centuries ago. The celebration is observed here
with some of the fruits of the field and some of the fruits of the barn. We
celebrate at my house with the with turkey and with potatoes and hopefully
sometimes parsnip, turnip and a whole bunch of vegetables that actually don't
always make the table during the rest the year. It's kind of traditional.
Turnip is not a vegetable that my wife likes very much. It’s not something that
we’d eat most the time, but somehow or other it brings back the early settlers,
who had to grow those crops that lasted. You know, the things you keep in the root cellar – and
many of the vegetables of Thanksgiving for us are root vegetables. I know that many people celebrate with a ham
dinner and some with other kinds of food, but tradition seems to dictate what
each family does. It's funny that we celebrate Thanksgiving as we do, because
these days we don't have much of a sense of harvest. Most of us living in
cities, and even if we live in rural areas, we can go to the grocery store and
find all kinds of fruits and vegetables in and out of season. In fact sometimes I wonder whether some of
the young people even have an idea of what the proper season is for this thing
or that thing. I know, we enjoy a
strawberry social in the spring, but we also have strawberries year-round. It's
a great time when the corn comes in the summer but there's almost no time we
can’t go to the grocery store and buy some corn on the cob. I know that we
recognize how much fresher it is just off the fields. When it has just been harvested at the right
time, when it has been grown in natural conditions, rather than greenhouses or
hydroponically. At the same time we have lost a sense of how closely tied we
are to the cycles of the seasons: the planting, the caring for crops and the
reaping of crops. There are not as many of us who are farmers today.
In this day and age, and is
particularly for us in North America, we find ourselves enjoying food
year-round and perhaps we've lost some of the sense of thankfulness. Perhaps we
take it for granted: we go through the store and we pick through the
vegetables, trying to find the best head of lettuce, trying to find the ripest
tomatoes and trying to find is strawberries that haven’t been sitting for too
long. We carefully check the best before date before we by our milk, and we
look for the freshest bread, the choice of grains – we have an abundance in our
society today and we can get a little bit picky. When it comes to that, I
remember some of the tales of the depression when my grandmother and
grandfather, My Nanny in my Poppy were young families trying to make a go of
it. How difficult it was to find what was needed to feed the kids! My
grandmother and grandfather worked for while as laborers in an apple orchard
and they were allowed to take any of the fallen apples home. That was basically
what my dad grew up on when he was of tender years my grandmother apparently
had hundreds of ways to preserve apples in jellies and sauces and pies, and all
kinds of things. That was because there wasn't that kind of abundance for them.
They didn't have the choice of picking the best apples – those went to market!
They had to choose what they could find in a hard time.
And yet we keep hearing (and
perhaps it's been too long because we don't hear those voices talking) about
how thankful they were for the little things. How thankful they were to have
enough food because they knew that it didn't have to be that way. What about
you? When you go to the grocery store are you like me just trying to get this
job done? I am not a good shopper. I
just want it over with, and I'm not very impressed by all the abundance on the
shelves. I wonder whether I shouldn't spend more time just being in awe, being filled with wonder at how many things
we have to choose from; how good we've got it right now. I know that not everyone
is doing well financially. It's tough times. It's a difficult economy. Just
this summer my wife was laid off and she joined the ranks of so many people who
are trying hard to find work in the midst of these things. It seems to me that we become more thankful,
more aware that life isn't to be taken for granted but is to be understood as a
great gift for which we can be thankful.
I'm so thankful for the way
God provides, but I'm more aware of his provision when there's a bit of need, a
bit of a worry. I remember to put my trust in God and I remember that he's the
one who gave us the prosperous times as well. As I speak out on the radio, I
don't know the condition of the various people who are listening. Some of you
might be at the top of your game. You might be celebrating Thanksgiving that is
filled with family and abundance, good news and happiness. Or it might be one
of those years when your Thanksgiving is a little bit lonely or little bit
stressed; difficult for reasons of grief or loss. How do we remain thankful for
the harvest that God has given us?
Well one thing I do is I listen to other people giving thanks and that helps to lift my spirits. I want to share with you a song by Greg Sczebel, a Canadian singer and songwriter. The song is simply titled Thank You.
As we celebrate Thanksgiving
and the harvest, you may notice that the description I read speaks of two
different harvest festivals. One is called the feast of harvest when the first
fruits of the crops are brought in, and then at the end of the season is the
feast of ingathering when you gather in all the crops from the fields. When the
people of Israel celebrated they celebrated two different kinds of harvests:
one was the promise of harvest in the feast of first fruits. When first you see
ripe fruit, grain or other crops, and you recognize that God has begun to
provide what you need, well, that was a great celebration. Then at the end,
when all the work of harvest was done, you can see the abundance that God had
given, well, then you had another feast!
Sounds like a great plan!
But I want to speak about it a third kind of harvest which Scripture tells
about. It speaks of the harvest that Jesus was gathering when he went about
doing his good work in the gospel according to Matthew. Jesus speaks about that
harvest. Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching their
synagogues preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and
sickness. When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them because they were
harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his
disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of
the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest field.” Now here was
Jesus doing a great work among all the people: healing diseases and sicknesses,
preaching the good news. He saw great crowds that needed the blessing of God
and he said to the disciples, “This is a harvest.” This is bringing the
goodness in the Providence of God into the storehouses. It's the fruit of God's
labour to bring salvation. Here is Jesus bringing in the harvest, bringing
people into new life, into new health, into God's love, and he says to the
disciples that there is a great big harvest, an amazing harvest! The only
problem is that not enough people are working in that harvest. There are not
enough people going and gathering in the lost and the helpless and bringing
them into the safety of God's storehouse. Jesus, immediately upon calling the
disciples to pray for workers into the harvest, sends them as workers into the
harvest. He called his 12 disciples to him and he gave them authority to drive
out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness and then he sent them
into the towns and villages of Israel. He tells them to pray for workers in the
harvest and then he sends them as workers in the harvest.
There is a great harvest that God is gathering even today. I don't know whether you see it around you; whether you belong to a church that is growing or church that is slowly declining; whether you see great forces at work in society that seem to be impeding the forward progress of the gospel or whether you see the power of the Holy Spirit at work and you, in tangible ways, see that there is a harvest being gathered in. That God is gathering a harvest and he calls us to two things. One is to pray that there will be workers for the harvest. We recognize that this is a work that is so great it requires more than just one pastor at the head of a church, or more than just one committee and the church is engaged in a harvest that requires many workers. Then as we pray for workers in the harvest he calls us and sends us into that harvest.
There is a great harvest that God is gathering even today. I don't know whether you see it around you; whether you belong to a church that is growing or church that is slowly declining; whether you see great forces at work in society that seem to be impeding the forward progress of the gospel or whether you see the power of the Holy Spirit at work and you, in tangible ways, see that there is a harvest being gathered in. That God is gathering a harvest and he calls us to two things. One is to pray that there will be workers for the harvest. We recognize that this is a work that is so great it requires more than just one pastor at the head of a church, or more than just one committee and the church is engaged in a harvest that requires many workers. Then as we pray for workers in the harvest he calls us and sends us into that harvest.
You know, when the people of
Israel went out to harvest the land for their sustenance, for the food they
needed for the year to come, God gave them a particular command (Leviticus 23:22):
“and when you reap the harvest of your land do not reap to
the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go
over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave
them for the poor and the alien, I am the Lord your God.”
It seems to me that one way
of celebrating how great was God's provision was for the people of Israel to
recognize that other people need to be blessed by the harvest that God had
given. It wasn't good enough simply to gather all the grain and all the fruit
to yourself and keep it all and be glad your storehouse was full. Instead part
of their Thanksgiving was leaving something for someone else, letting their
field be a blessing to another. Well, as God has gathered you into his harvest
as God has gathered you into his storehouse and given you the gift of eternal
life, he does call you to share that good news with others.
I know that you are wanting
to give thanks to God, and I do too. So let's turn to him in prayer.
Almighty God, we do pray with thanksgiving for all the
things you provide: the things our body needs, the things our society needs,
the things that our family needs. We know that we still have things that we ask
for, things that we lean on you for. You've provided so well that we can trust
you for these other things. Help us to be a blessing as you have blessed us, in
Jesus name Amen.
Thank you, listeners, for
your encouragement and support. We thank you because you keep us on the air
week by week. If you can, please make out a cheque payable to Good News
Christian Ministries and send it to box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. We
will send you a receipt at income tax time. Please also tell others about this
program and don't forget to mark your calendars for November 1st for that
special evening of worship and celebration in Ottawa with Ernie and Linda Cox.
Be sure to worship in a
church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out with compassion,
integrity and resolve.
Now to conclude our program
here is a song from Mary, Mary. The song is called Thankful and is from the
album by the same name.
I do pray that the Lord will hold your heart
and you would know Jesus personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside
deep within your heart and may the heavenly Father surround you with his
constant and abiding and accompanying love.
Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk
Radio.
- Rev. Brian Wilkie
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To listen to the above
broadcast, click on the following link:
